


sun rise, fireflies

by DetectiveRoboRyan



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, Drama, F/F, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Grieving, Healing, Helping Raise your Gay Lover's Kid, M/M, Matchmaking, Past DubCon, Pining, Relationship Study, Sad, Self-Loathing, Sexually Implicit, Suicidal Ideation, Unrequited Love, Written in all lowercase, angst with some fluff mixed in there, angsty fluff, boats and birds came on while i was writing this and now im crying, fuck capitalism, i opened up a pages doc at 4am and this happened, lucina's judgement, lucina's judgement-- lead-in and aftermath, trying to matchmake your dad and your ex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-05
Updated: 2016-11-05
Packaged: 2018-08-27 12:25:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8401657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DetectiveRoboRyan/pseuds/DetectiveRoboRyan
Summary: a sunrise is a hopeful thing because even if it says you are still alive and you have to march through hell another day, it also says you are still alive and for today, you are strong and you have won the battle of survival. the fireflies come out at night and they say, we are tiny lights in the darkness and if we can shine when there is no other light then you can, too.this is a story of heavy silk coats and air that smells too much of ash, of tiny cloth dolls and one too many mugs of ale, of fireflies in tiny hands and living to see another day, and of the gross, messy, bloody, disgusting, fuckin' miracle of life.





	

his name isn't robin but he's forgotten what it is. lucina knows but she won't tell him and given the way she side-eyes him he's not going to ask. that's alright. chrom named him robin after the red-breasted ylissean songbird and he's content with that as his name.  
  
he is not sure what sort of home he comes from but he knows the garrison is one he does not wish to leave; they took him in albeit reluctantly when he was an amnesiac foreigner speaking broken common-tongue with grass in his hair on the word of their prince and he's proven himself, time and time again, to be the one that protects them, that directs them, that has grown them into a multicultural patchwork of a unit that is no longer a militia that frightens bandits from cornfields. he has met emmeryn and she told him, using words that were short and cognate with common so that he could understand, that she does not like the idea of using the formal ylissean military as an attacking force but they can be one if necessary, and she has known since chrom was fourteen and started begging for her to let him lead something that the shepherds have the potential to be ylisse's sword arm. but they do lack a tactician, and although she has never liked the idea of sending her siblings off to war, she knows it is an inevitability and if it is so, they need a brain. so she gives him her blessing to be that brain.  
  
it is a responsibility he wears with pride. he is fast and he is clever and he is good, and with every spare second he studies, organizes, micromanages if need be. he is the one in charge of chore schedules at the garrison and he is the one who collects invetory reports, checks off checklists, recieves status updates from soldier and spy alike, and thinks himself, perhaps somewhat egotistically, as the grease that keeps the army running smoothly. the shepherds say he is both a madman and a genius, both heroic and suspicious. he knows it is because of how he looks and speaks but he tells himself _don't mind them, just do your job._ so he does.  
  
by the time they've scoured the world for the battle-scarred kids with tarnished weapons and eyes too old for their bodies that lucina knows, and by the time they're tracking down the gems from the fire emblem in valm, the shepherds are a well-oiled machine. the future children do not try to fit into it as well as robin would like them to, but in truth they answer to no authority but lucina and gather themselves under no flag but a tattered cape tied to a shabby lance. they will take note of robin's strategies and go where he tells them, and he notices they fight not like soldiers but like starving animals given a bipedal gait and weapons. he once saw lucina, sword arm badly wounded and blade four feet away, punch a risen into submission and then claw its throat out with her stubby fingernails. considering the fact that every single one of those kids will lay down their lives for their leader and use even more vicious and aggressive attacks without a thought, robin lets them do what they want. he does have other things to worry about.  
  
and oh, he worries. it has been a long four years for a man in love with another he cannot have. chrom has known since what feels like forever that robin pines for another man, but try as he may, chrom cannot pry who this man is or why robin has decided he cannot have him. _you won't ever know unless you try,_ chrom tells him, and robin looks at him with dark, sad eyes and says _there is no use in trying if i know the answer._  
  
chrom wants to believe that _anything can change_ and he wants to believe that his friend will one day find his own happiness, but there are times that robin is so distant, he's not certain who it is he knows anymore. but chrom is happy with his wife and his daughter safe at home in ylisse, and robin smiles (chrom cannot tell that the smile does not reach his eyes; he knows only now that emmeryn always smiled the same way) and says _i'm happy for you, chrom,_ and stood next to him in ylissean formalwear at his wedding as his best man. he smiled but it did not reach his eyes and chrom did not notice. (he would have cared if he did notice— despite what robin seems to think. chrom cares. chrom _does_ care. chrom will care if robin tells him or if he finally learns to read the sadness in robin's eyes.)  
  
chrom is a kind man. it is both his greatest strength and his biggest undoing. it is what makes him reach out to every single shepherd that joins his army, bar none. some push him away, some do not. he accepts all. it is his army and he feels nothing but pride at how far it has come. chrom reminds robin of a sunflower, pushing up past the soil and growing, growing taller on stalks strong from sunlight and water and nutrients, sprouting leaves and eventually putting up his petaled head proudly, standing tall as if daring the wind to knock him down. he is a sunflower grown from love and determination and ambition and a fierce desire to protect, and to robin he is beautiful. he is kindness incarnate, he is a hearth warming fingers that have felt cold for too long, he is the sun itself. and robin will reach for the sun and build wings of bronze feathers and hot wax; he tries in what is perhaps an overdone cliche that robin reads about in romance novels written by noblewomen with absent husbands and active imaginations and too much time on their hands but it has never felt more true. usually it is the clever, witty love interest with a mysterious past that wins over the protagonist with their bookish charm and acts as the sun while the determined, empathetic hero is the one who builds wings and flies to the sun regardless of how hard the fall will be, but this time robin is the clever, witty mystery boy with bookish charms that is building the wings, and chrom is the sun. chrom has always been the sun.  
  
robin pines. he watches with eyes of an outsider as chrom has the time of his life with his perfect ylissean wife and daughter, as he showers them with love and kisses and affection that makes robin's heart ache. he tells himself he is a logical, pragmatic man but he has never been so wrong. so he pines.  
  
lucina notices. she is so different from chrom's baby in castle ylisse that it's jarring to robin at first, listening to her. she's a year younger than chrom and robin but her eyes, hard and grimly determined, make her seem much older. she has skin, freckled and sunburned, that is crossed with battle scars healed on their own or with shaky sutures. her hands are calloused through her gloves from blisters over blisters that come from lifting her sword despite bleeding palms. there is tough skin built over the soles of her feet because her boots are too small and rub through her socks and she has done a lot of walking and running in her day. when robin meets her it is the night after he's met chrom and she's jumped through a portal in spacetime with a scratched butterfly mask and tarnished armor and an infant in a sling at her breast, and she tucks the baby close to her and rolls when she hits the ground. after the battle the baby cries because it is hungry and tired and lucina leaves, staring at him through the slits of her mask.  
  
and it is lucina that cries after she sees him, because even though she knows now what she felt for him was not love, she cannot feel nothing for him. even if he is not the same robin she shared a bed with until his death, even if he is not the same robin that ripped himself apart before he could know about his child, she still feels. the connection was there. even if she knows he was thinking of her father the whole time and even if she was wishing she were anywhere else and could open up her throat enough to say _no, let's stop, it hurts, i don't like this, we are not happy together,_ it was physical and it was there and it happened. lucina cannot pretend it didn't.  
  
she nurses morgan when she's curled underneath an ancient fallen tree and there are tears on her cheeks the whole time. but she must anyway and she thinks that perhaps this time, she can convince him to confess to her father and not have to settle for second-best. (because no matter what severa says, lucina thinks she will always be second-best to her father.) she dozes on and off but cannot sleep even though the sky and stars are so much brighter than they were in her ruined future, because even now every time she closes her eyes she sees twisted corpses on the ground full of claw wounds or arrowheads, friends that she knew and loved but that did not survive to go through the gate leaping before blades meant for her, the sun rising on a battlefield that smells of death and sulfur and smoke and although sunrises are often things of hope these sunrises are only grim reminders that she's still alive and she has to go through this again. death would be easier but she's never gotten around to trying or even thinking seriously about the act.

the air in the future smells like ash because they have to burn the dead so they won't come back to life. lucina wonders if she will smell ash in her nose for the rest of her life.  
  
morgan grows. her first birthday comes on a night too cold to be may that they spend in a ruined barn in eastern ylisse, and lucina sings her the happy birthday song even though she's trying not to cry. her second happens in a cheap inn room in ylisstol and she claps her tiny hands to lucina's song and tries to sing along but she's two so it's not very good. her third is during peacetime and she says mama, it's my birthday when they're walking down a forested path hand in hand on their way to lucina's next mercenary job so lucina sings the happy birthday song and this time she doesn't cry, just polishes the little white hair clips from her soft curls on her shirt and clips them back in, keeping her hair from her face. she has big, dark eyes and the brand of the exalt on the small of her back. the mark of grima shows itself in her right eye and makes the dark gray even darker. she is lucina's and she is beautiful and lucina loves her but she fears, fears what sort of mother she can ever be.  
  
she reveals the truth to the shepherds after ylisse has gone to aid regna ferox in the war against valm and she is with them, because where the shepherds go, work goes, and lucina needs the coin. she has forgotten how important coin is before the world collapses. she has made the decision that morgan will never have to get used to being hungry and will do anything to see that this stays true.  
  
_my name is lucina,_ she says to chrom and robin, and she lets the news escape to the shepherds that she is chrom's daughter from the future. robin asks her if she's underwhelmed by dad's combat skills. she says _i did know he always fought like a battle was an honorable duel but i didn't realize the extent until i tried to fight him._ chrom groans and tells them both that he isn't that bad, and they laugh. robin's soft laugh sounds so familiar except now it is not done with deep bags beneath his eyes and lines in his face, and it is young and witty instead of old and worn. she once told him that she loved his laugh but it mostly makes her think of his breath on her neck on dark, sweaty nights between the sheets of the low bunk that was realistically too narrow for two people, and of lying awake afterwards on her side while he snored, wondering if she's supposed to feel sick and shaky and unclean after nights like this. she never really rested when she slept with him.  
  
but that is neither here nor there, she decides. they accept her into the army and they go around valm and find lucina's friends and the shepherds grow into a shining, gleaming blade chrom intends to use to protect not only ylisse but the world. lucina still takes mercenary jobs and uses the money to buy things for morgan, or for ale. more often for ale once gerome starts sewing her clothing. it's not a good idea but she tries not to drink more than is needed. she comes back to the garrison late at night with her cheeks flushed and her speech slurred and her gait lopsided but at least she feels like herself and not a dirty towel hanging over the side of a washtub.  
  
they find severa again. they embrace on the battlefield and lucina thinks _it's her, it's really her, she's alive,_ and it has been a long time since someone has embraced her as wholly, fiercely as severa does when lucina calls her name. she drops her shortsword and sprints half a step and they collide, and their armor clangs together but lucina doesn't even care because she has her face buried in severa's hair and oh, how she missed this. she's missed the nights in the hayloft and holding hands without reason and laughing over meals over something stupid and forgetting the world was ending when they were together because somehow it felt like everything was going to be okay if they were still close enough to speak and touch and kiss. when they are close lucina feels like love is still alive and hope is not a fool's errand, and the next sunrise would not feel so grim.  
  
she has told morgan, _my friends will come back soon, when we find them. they love you just as much as i do. they are my family, so they are yours too._ and until morgan got old enough to listen to people wondering _who's the father,_ it was enough for her. she has asked _mama, who's my father_ and lucina felt her throat close up. she did not give morgan an answer.  
  
morgan is four years old, almost. she's old enough to be out of baby gowns now, old enough to run and skip and hop around the castle with a battered cloth doll in one hand and a toy sword made of scrap wood in the other. she's old enough to know that sometimes people don't get up when they get hurt really bad but not quite old enough to understand that bandages can't fix that. she likes to roughhouse with nowi (nowi always lets her win and lucina is grateful for that because nowi is also a literal dragon and can bend metal with her bare hands and eat daggers like cookies) and the other shepherds bring her toys sometimes, things like building blocks and carved animals. chrom got her a set of twelve tin soldiers and she likes to put them in doll clothes and then ram them into each other. lucina has gathered that there's a different elaborate adventure-drama every day that always ends in her least favorite one getting ceremonially slam-dunked into the laundry bin. severa gives her a doll made from yarn and fabric scraps, with tiny button eyes and no mouth, and a faded green gingham ribbon for a sash. morgan tucks it in her pocket and says _thank you_ because lucina prompted her to, and it's not like severa was expecting anything different because morgan is four.  
  
and for a few months, lucina is happy. severa comes with her to the tavern some nights, and sometimes the rest of her friends come too and drinking stops being something she only does when she can't stop thinking about death and destruction and feeling sick after robin touches her and the air smelling like ash. she wakes up the next morning with a headache but severa is tucked into her chest, eyes screwed shut to keep out the sunlight, and there is dust filtering through the air and riding the sunbeams shining through the window and the air does not smell like ash, and she thinks that seeing another sunrise may not be so bad.  
  
the war with valm ends when say'ri plants her blade in the conqueror's heart and she twists for good measure, and robin can read it in the hurt on her face that she knows it is better to be kind but she has too much hate for the man that made her brother die to show mercy to walhart, even to grant him a quick death. robin can tell she wants to make him suffer, see him broken like any mortal man, but she doesn't. he's glad— she's younger than lucina and too young to be so hurt.  
  
the last gemstone is in plegia but the king tricked them into a battle and it was all robin could do but to secure an escape route for the shepherds. he hears validar and his general (why does her name sound so familiar to him?) talking in plegian that he understands but doesn't know why, and he hears a name that is not his but they're clearly talking about him. he does not tell chrom. lucina does not stop looking at him strangely for the rest of the march back to camp. he's learned by now that she doesn't like him, even if he knows that's not all there is to it.  
  
she invites him to walk with her after dinner. they talk about inconsequential things— the wall that needs repairing, how good a job sir frederick did with dinner that night, what a dick move it was that validar pulled back there. robin attempts to ask her how things with severa are going and she avoids the question by staring at him with an expression that says to him _'it'd be better if we weren't in the middle of another war.'_ he changes the subject after that.  
  
they're some distance from camp when she stops. the sun is setting. he stops as well. she turns, and the look she gives him is not quite a glare but robin can only wonder what it is he did to make her look at him like that. he respects her not solely because she's chrom's daughter but because of her skill in combat and her strength of character; he's tried to talk to her but she's private and guarded and it seems to be the case especially with him. he cannot read her and is not used to this. it's vexing and puzzling and inticing all at once.  
  
she begins with a breath. she is not looking at him. _there are some things i haven't told you,_ she says. _i feel like it's time for you to know the truth._  
  
he quirks an eyebrow. _the truth?_  
  
_i knew my father until i was eleven,_ she says. _he taught me to fight— how to fight like nobles that haven't seen a battle in their life, anyway._  
  
_so who taught you how to fight like someone who wins?_ robin replies.  
  
lucina chuckles without humor. _the risen._  
  
robin regrets asking, even in jest.  
  
_people told me, when he died,_ she continues. she sets a hand on the hilt of her sword, perhaps out of habit, and paces. _that he was brave until the very end. i believed it. i still do— he sells himself short, comparing himself to emmeryn. he inspires hope in his own way. he is a very great man._  
  
robin agrees. _he is,_ he says. _i don't know where i'd be if he hadn't found me back then. probably dead. definitely lost._  
  
lucina hums. _you love him,_ she says.  
  
_he's my best friend,_ robin says automatically. _we all love him._  
  
_no,_ lucina replies. it is now she looks him in the eye, blue eyes gleaming in the dusklight. _you love him. you have for a very long time. but you think so little of yourself that you think you will never have a chance— you let him marry my mother because you think you have no place in his happiness. you settle for me._  
  
_what?_ robin doesn't understand.  
  
_you heard me,_ lucina snaps, and suddenly she is all the anger that robin has half-expected. her hands tighten around the hilt of her sword as a reflex but she does not draw it. _you settle for me. you can't have my father so you settle for me, who looks like him and acts like him even though i am not him, and perhaps in another life you wouldn't do it, but in the one i know you tell me pretty things that i like to hear because being told that i'm strong and beautiful is a relief in a world of destruction and chaos and ash. we do it because we're lonely and broken people and everyone has always said i would find a man anyway after i'm through fooling around with girls, so i say alright even though i already do love somebody. you settle for me and i don't see it until after you kill yourself and i hear people whisper about how you loved my father._  
  
there are tears in her eyes. robin doesn't know what to say.  
  
_the robin i knew,_ she says, _ripped himself apart with his bare hands. it was gruesome, i'm told— nobody would let me see your body, perhaps because they thought i would faint and wail at how awful it was that my lover had died in this way._ (robin can picture chrom in a ballgown and a hat made of fruit doing the tango with conqueror walhart more easily than he can picture lucina fainting and wailing.)  
  
lucina swallows. _he never lived to see morgan,_ she says. _his daughter. your daughter. she has your eyes._  
  
robin could have predicted many things for her to say, but not that. it hits him like a ton of bricks, like walking into a glass door. but she's looking at him and there are tears on her cheeks, and he knows it to be true and he can read in her eyes that she went along with it then but did not really want it, she never did, and after it happened it hurt and she regretted not saying _no, this isn't working, i am not happy with you._ she loves morgan but she did not want to be a mother and perhaps she had happy memories of him once but they are tarnished by what he did. he knows why she looks at him like she does now.  
  
_i'm sorry,_ he says, because what else does one say? _you didn't deserve that._  
  
_it doesn't matter now,_ she replies. _it's already happened and the robin it happened with is dead. but i did mean what i said when i said i came back to ensure that my future will not be rewritten._  
  
she draws her sword in one smooth movement. the mis-healed joints in her sword arm and hand click and scrape and it must be painful but she pays no attention to any pain she feels. she points it at robin. she is not crying but there are still tears on her cheeks.  
  
_the robin i knew told me something, the night before he died,_ she says. _his name._  
  
_my name?_ robin repeats.  
  
_ravindra,_ lucina says. _lord of the sun. he hated it. he never wanted to be a ruler, but he never had a choice. i suppose we never do, with some things._  
  
ravindra. the name sounds familiar to his tongue and his ears, and it pulls out strands of memories from where once was darkness. hot food with cold drinks, flavors too strong for his baby tongue but he loved it anyway. sand under his toes that is hot in the sun. being lifted onto a set of shoulders when he is still small and he's looking out over the city and being told this will be yours someday. tall towers filled with books and with stained-glass domes in depictions of the constellations. the centerpiece of the northern castle, a dragon skull the size of a city carved from the side of the mountain. building blocks with plegian letters. enchanting his toys to make them fly. star charts. forts made of books. marble mosaics.  
  
_that was me,_ he says, and it's not a question. lucina nods.  
  
_you deserve to know your own name,_ she says. _i'm going to kill you anyway, so it doesn't really matter, but i am not without mercy. the condemned deserves to know who he is._  
  
there is no hint of jest in her eyes even if lucina _could_ make a decent joke. she points her blade at him directly, hand strong but it trembles just a little bit, and the hard callouses on her fingers rub against the leather of her sword. her hands are bare; they are chapped and her nails are bitten and marred with little white streaks that happen when you're malnourished. she clenches her sword in her fist and her bruised knuckles go white.  
  
_in my future,_ she says. _my father is murdered by a close friend. i'd suspected, but i didn't know until now— until i saw that you are at validar's mercy. you are my father's murderer. and to prevent that, i have to kill you._  
  
_let's think about this,_ robin tries to say, because when faced with being told one's best friend's daughter is going to kill them it's an understandably shocking thing and one is not ready to accept it right off the bat unless one has some serious suicidal ideations one has been sitting on and seriously thinking about, in which case one ought to talk to a professional or someone one trusts so one is no longer dueling with such unpleasant thoughts alone.  
  
_i've thought all i need,_ lucina replies coldly. _if i kill you, then father will live. that is all that needs to be done. don't make this harder than it needs to be. i am merciful enough that it will be painless._  
  
_it can't just be about your father living,_ robin continues, holding his hands out. _lucina, if this is about the things i did to you, in your future…_  
  
_it's not about that!_ lucina protests. _well, maybe it is, somewhat, but who cares? when has anything ever cared what i think? this is about justice and preventing a good man from dying to a monster!_  
  
she takes a breath. _please, don't resist,_ she says. _don't make it harder on yourself than it needs to be._  
  
so robin takes a breath. _i don't think this is the answer,_ he says. _don't you want to protect people? that's my job, too. so let's work together and figure out a way to protect all of our people._  
  
_i couldn't have said it better myself,_ someone else says, and lucina curses, and the point of her sword hits the dirt. robin turns. chrom strides over to them, all shining armor and a cape billowing in the wind, young and strong and exactly the picture of what a hero-king should look like.  
  
_chrom,_ she says, and robin can tell she almost says father. but she doesn't— perhaps she doesn't think she deserves to call him that with what she's fully intending to do.  
  
_put away your sword, lucina,_ he says. we can settle this without violence.  
  
she shakes her head. _you can't stop me, she says. it's either him or you, and i won't let it be you. if it's you that dies, then all this will have been for nothing and i'll have failed at protecting my family._  
  
_nobody needs to die,_ chrom insists. _we'll work it out together, like we always have. right, robin?_ he looks at robin with a smile, and for once robin returns it with a small one of his own. they do make a wonderful team— they've always worked out problems like this together.  
  
lucina swallows. _step aside, chrom,_ she says, lifting her blade again. _i'll fight you if i must._  
  
_you wouldn't kill me,_ he says.  
  
she doesn't answer that. she looks chrom in the eye, sword-point towards him. the implication that robin gets is that she will kill chrom if it means robin dies, too.  
  
_this is murder,_ chrom tells her.  
  
_i know,_ she replies.  
  
_is there nothing i can say that will deter you from this?_ chrom tries again. _we don't have to fight._  
  
_i've made up my mind,_ she says. _i'm sorry, commander. if you won't let me do this, then i have no choice but to kill you, too._  
  
chrom sighs. _have it your way,_ he says, drawing falchion from its sheath. lucina lunges and robin sees something primal in her eyes in that instant— this is not about countries and it is not about religion and it is not even about justice, it is about protecting her family. and in that instant chrom is not her family even though he has said he doesn't mind her calling him father; her family is a ragged group of kids she led through a war zone on foot with nothing, no supplies and no food and and no plan, a group that trusted her when she said she'd get them out because someone had to take charge and nobody else would. they followed her because she stepped up to protect them and she did, time and time again, and they followed her through time itself and will do anything to protect her in return.  
  
they clash but it is not like that time in ferox when lucina was still masked and chrom was still mostly a noble dabbling in soldiery. chrom has improved since then but lucina is no longer holding back and fighting with rules; she stabs, she slashes, she kicks in the backs of his knees and aims to bring him to the ground. she's fast and deadly and vicious and even if her blows glance off his shield when he raises it, she's still under and around his defenses. he disarms her by knocking falchion from her hand. it spins from her grasp and plants itself in the dirt four yards away but that does not deter her— she throws herself at him with her fists until her knuckles tear open from skidding against his armor, shoves aside the flat of his blade with the scuffed, dented armor on her forearm. he's turned his blade because he refuses to kill her, refuses to draw blood. even if she's the same age as they, she is still as much his daughter as the baby in the castle, and even if she wants to kill him he will not hurt her.  
  
she exhausts herself when he pins her to the ground with his shield. she struggles, tries and tries to claw herself back up, but she can't.  
  
_you win,_ she cedes, spitting the word. _are you going to kill me?_  
  
_of course not,_ he says. _i needn't kill without reason, and i won't raise my sword to a friend._  
  
he offers her a hand. she doesn't take it, and stares him in the eye as she pulls herself to her feet. she looks to robin.  
  
_we'll find a way,_ robin promises. we always have. _remember that time on the boat over to valm, when i set the ocean on fire? or when we used the garrison cannons to get those risen away from ylisstol before they even got there? or the potluck?_  
  
lucina is not convinced. _i see you won't listen to me,_ she says. _fine. i've done what i can to protect my family._  
  
_but_ we're _family,_ lucina, chrom tries to say. _even if i haven't raised you yet, you're still my daughter._  
  
_no,_ she says. _i'm not. your family is the perfect little baby in ylisstol and the woman that carried her, not the broken leader of a band of broken soldiers stumbling through darkness because dying is not an option. the man and woman that named me haven't been my family since i was a child. the reason i'm here is so the family i do have, my friends and my daughter, can live to see the tomorrow they deserve but were not given._  
  
_you may think this is about countries,_ she continues. _but who cares about countries? who cares about things like borders and nationalities and religions and when have they ever cared about us? i'm fighting by your side because this is how to protect the people that matter most to me, but i am not fighting for ylisse._  
  
she yanks her sword from the ground. _perhaps after this is all over, we can be friends, as you want it to be,_ she says. _the type of friends that are formed by conversations and common interests rather than on the battlefield. that would be nice, i suppose._  
  
_lucina, you don't have to run away,_ chrom says, and he takes her shoulder.  
  
she rips away. _don't fucking touch me,_ she snarls. then she calms the fire in her eyes and sheaths her sword.  
  
_the attack on validar will prove my point,_ she says. _that one of you must die. if i have to cut robin down there, then i will. otherwise, robin, you will kill chrom._  
  
_i understand,_ robin says. _and i believe you. so all we have to do is find a way to stop validar before he can order me to kill chrom. right?_ he smiles hopefully at chrom, because that's what chrom likes, isn't it? when robin shows hope and positivity? robin thinks that perhaps if he shows it enough he'll start to believe it himself.  
  
chrom claps him on the shoulder. _we'll be alright,_ he promises. _whatever happens, we'll face it together. partners, right?_  
  
_partners,_ robin echoes. lucina thinks that every time he says that he dies a little inside.  
  
she's never been one for saying goodbye and they seem to have a handle on things, so she turns and leaves, cape fluttering in the wind.  
  
the sun has set and the sky at the horizon is orange and yellow and blue. the stars are coming out. chrom glows in the low dusk and robin's heart aches because he is beautiful, he is so beautiful, he has always been beautiful and every day that passes has robin wondering more and more why he hasn't said something, anything, about how he feels. chrom doesn't have to return them and robin is more than happy to let chrom go pursue other women or men to his heart's content but he regrets sitting on these feelings this long. what lucina said is testament to what he fears— there is a monster in his head that feeds on his emotions and perhaps by that point it will have greater control and sensitivity to what he feels. like any parasite, it needs to feed, and if manipulating lucina into some depraved relationship based on her resemblance to her father and their mutual mortal urge for connection is what it needed, then that is what it did. robin only wonders how much was the monster and how much was him all along.  
  
_i heard everything,_ chrom tells him then, snapping robin from his thoughts. he's looking at robin with a mixture of what could be anger, but robin has seen chrom angry and this is not quite it. either way, robin doesn't blame him. whether it was the monster or not, what his daughter went through is the responsibility of robin's other self. what is strangest, robin has echoes of memories of that— touches, twisting bedsheets, rolling over and falling asleep sated but still feeling her curl in on herself and tremble. but that has not happened, so why does he remember it?  
  
robin swallows. _how much is everything?_  
  
_let's see,_ chrom recalls. _you've been pining for me for a very long time, you fathered my daughter's child, and you also murder me. i did figure your name wasn't robin— ravindra, though, is it? it suits you._  
  
a spark of memory. _i told you it was ravindra when we met, the first time,_ he says. _you misheard me and thought i was saying ravin. and then because you don't speak plegian, you turned it into robin._  
  
_should i call you ravindra?_ chrom asks.  
  
_no, you don't have to,_ robin replies. _i like robin._  
  
_but if it's not your name…_ chrom hesitates. _i don't want to call you something you don't want to be called._  
  
_just robin is fine, chrom,_ robin insists. _it's grown on me. and can you imagine vaike trying to say ravindra? i think it's better for everyone if i stick to robin._  
  
chrom chuckles. _alright, robin, then,_ he says. _if that's what you want._  
  
he goes quiet. _why didn't you tell me before?_ he murmurs. robin knows what he's talking about. _it's not that we have incompatibale preferences. you know that._  
  
_yes,_ robin mumbles. _but… gods, i don't know. you always seem so happy, so confident. when you're romantically involved with somebody, you know everything— the bad parts, the ugly parts, along with the good parts. you deserve somebody who can share your smile all the time, not someone who's more bad and ugly than good. someone like evie. you're happy with her, right?_  
  
_i am, yes,_ chrom nods. _evie is wonderful and i'm very, very glad i met her. i'm sorry._ he's not looking robin in the eye.  
  
_don't be,_ robin replies. _it's not like you can do anything about it now, right? you didn't do anything wrong, and i feel better having said it._  
  
chrom doesn't, but he's glad robin feels better. there's a little more honesty in his smile this time, and that makes every bit of anger and righteous indignation that chrom feels not being able to really make his friend happy the way he deserves fade to something that's not as big of a deal. if it makes robin happy, then he'll weather the worst pain in all the realms.  
  
_i want you to be happy,_ chrom says, holding robin by the shoulders. _and i do love you. whether it's as a friend or as a lover, i don't know, but does it really matter that much? what's important is that we stand together, that we fight side by side through whatever may come. i'll stand with you through everything that you're going through. you don't have to bear the bad and ugly alone._  
  
_i don't deserve you,_ robin mumbles.  
  
_bullshit,_ chrom replies. _i want you to be happy. that's the most important part of all of this. i can't accept your confession and have us both be happy together but isn't there something, anything else i can do to make you happy?_  
  
robin shakes his head, and smiles. _just knowing you is enough,_ he says. _i've said my bit. as long as you're happy, i'll be okay._  
  
_i'll make it up to you someday,_ chrom promises, clasping a fist over his heart. _i'll make you the happiest man alive, robin! just see if i don't!_  
  
and robin laughs, a real laugh that sounds like birds chirping when they chase one another with their little wings flapping, and even if it's them trying to kill each other or mate, to chrom it means happiness. he's very glad robin can laugh like that. he wants to hear it every day, for the rest of his life.  
  
lucina is long gone from the clearing where they're standing when robin laughs, but something in her gut tells her that things have just gone well. she allows herself to smile. she's glad chrom stopped her.  
  
the sun rises on another day the next morning and in a few months they prepare and march out to the showdown with validar in plegia. lucina marches with the rest, falchion heavy at her side but she doesn't notice the weight much anymore; if anything her arms feel lighter without a baby in them. but morgan will be safer in the garrison and lucina promises herself that she will return, even if she has to crawl all the way back to ylisse with her last breaths and her bloody fingernails. she will not be a mother that leaves her child alone.  
  
severa walks with her. she's gone through four peppermint sticks on this trip alone and that's how lucina knows she's anxious. even if chrom is a very good speaker, there is very little he can do to truly assuage the fears of twelve children that grew up with the consequences of this battle's loss hanging over their heads like a persistent storm cloud that occasionally snatched up their parents and spat out the bones. so all twelve of them are going, marching behind lucina in what was perhaps a formation at some point in time, but now it's mostly the defensive formation they've adopted that's safest for everyone. lucina is point. severa is one step behind and to the right. owain is the same at her left. it's not necessary anymore because they have scouts and soldiers protecting the way but lucina sees the way noire whispers in plegian and grips her talisman and the way laurent chews his fingernails when he thinks nobody will notice and the way gerome is even broodier than usual, and even though inigo's ever-present smile is there he's too anxious to even try to make it look real. lucina will win this for their sake as well as morgan's.  
  
the battle goes horribly right. robin stabs chrom through the chest with a thunderbolt because validar curses them and for a minute all is lost and lucina hears nothing but blood rushing in her ears because in the moment she feels like the terrified little girl she was when she was ten and her father didn't come back. did they only push this battle closer to the present? is she truly going to grow up alone now?  
  
basilio claps her on the shoulder and flavia musses her hair when they stride into the battlefield, whole and alive and unharmed, armor gleaming and blades sharp. it's as much a relief to see them again as it is a relief that they're not more teenagers. lucina has seen quite enough teenagers fighting wars. (she almost tells them later _i'm so glad you're old,_ but thinks better of it.)  
  
there's a speech about hope or something. it doesn't stick in lucina's mind because she's mostly given up on the speeches— most of what she needs to say is _we're still alive so let's keep walking_ and her friends will do it because the unspoken agreement amongst them is that lucina is their cause worth fighting for even if there's no other damn reason to get up in the morning. maybe she doesn't know what she's doing but who cares? when they pass down the story through speech and it becomes a myth, scholars will liken lucina to a prophet and think that it's perhaps a long-buried story from naga's following, and by then there will be no records of children returning from the future to stop the end of the world unless owain's battered diary miraculously survives that long, so nobody will really know the truth. lucina is alright with that. people will believe whatever they need to believe to give them hope.  
  
but chrom lives. he's wounded (they couldn't avoid that) but robin helps him up and lucina can tell he wants to forgo speeches entirely and just give validar the finger, but he doesn't and he says _anything can change,_ and he's looking at lucina when he says it.  
  
_that's your line,_ severa says. but lucina's eyes are shining and it doesn't even matter. and lucina has never felt hope, real hope, in the midst of a battle before but she does now. they celebrate in some shitty ylisstol tavern that night, one with stone walls still bearing scorch marks from the rioting, and there's ale and bawdy songs and fried things and hugging and lots of crying and an ill-advised push-up contest but lucina enjoys every second of it because she has never remembered feeling this young. the hangover is worth it.  
  
but it's back to business the next day and they march out to mount prism for the awakening. it's much more impressive when naga is at full power, lucina learns. and with a blade that glows chrom returns to the garrison and says _you know robin, i'm not crazy about these plans that have me almost dying._ and robin laughs and laughs and to lucina it sounds real and it's different from the quiet chuckle she'd grown familiar with. it's comforting, in a way.  
  
they meet more shepherds, old faces thought dead and new ones alike. conqueror walhart, at the head of an army of risen but bitter from his defeat. say'ri's brother yen'fay, spouting something about repairing past sins. validar's right-hand aversa, with new memories that were taken from her once. king gangrel but no longer a king, scrumming around with pirates but even he knows it was not going to last. aunt emmeryn, tending to the wounded in a little village with all of her kindness and determination but none of the weight on her shoulders. some old guy that tries to out-drink lucina once a very battered robin drags him back to the garrison. she doesn't remember his name, possibly because she won. it's an interesting mix of faces, to be brief.  
  
the night before they battle grima once and for all, before the grimleal's ritual summons the worshippers to the table, lucina knocks down a pint in the scorch-marked tavern with her friends and raises a toast to them, to all they've been through, and they may die tomorrow but they won't have died in vain. and everyone says hear, hear, and it is a solemn occasion but not an unhappy one. she and severa kiss quite a lot that night after everyone else is asleep and they sneak into a supply closet. lucina can't help but feel that someone is going to die tomorrow. she tells this to severa when they're tangled together in front of the fire in the room where the soldiers of the future all sleep in a big pile (they cannot sleep soundly otherwise) and severa says _are you scared it'll be chrom?_  
  
_not precisely,_ lucina admits. _someone will die but i don't know who, and no matter how hard i think i can't figure why it scares me so. what if it's you, severa?_  
  
_if i die for you, then i die with honor,_ severa swears.  
  
_don't say that,_ lucina frowns. _i don't want anyone dying for me._  
  
( _but i would, without a moment's hesitation,_ severa thinks. _your life has always been worth more than mine. if the future is to have any hope then you have to keep living and if i give my life seeing this to be truth then that's the way i go._ she does not say this.)  
  
_promise me you won't,_ lucina says. _promise me that we'll see each other again._  
  
_i promise,_ severa says. _and you promise the same thing. no more boneheaded hero moves, alright? i've got enough of that from cynthia._ and they laugh because it feels natural, and lucina nods and promises. they fall asleep to embers in the fireplace and the stars shining through a night that is clear and not filled with smoke and haze. lucina no longer smells ash when she breathes.  
  
lucina composes a letter to her mother. _it starts with mother, how are you? this is lucina, from about twenty-five years in the future_ and it ends with _please don't worry about how i'm going to grow up; i have good friends and a wonderful family and i think things will end up being okay. i wish i'd known you better._ she signs it _with love from lucina_ but she doesn't send it because there's no time to stop by the post office before the shepherds are going to take on grima and the anti-robin for the final showdown. lucina's stomach is in knots because she hears your mother and father are dead, tiny one in a low voice that sounds like the earth itself is speaking but she feels a little better when she tucks the letter into her shirt pocket inside her breastplate. it gives her hope that perhaps she'll be able to meet her mother for real, this time, instead of only having scattered memories of work songs and sunshine and smells like daffodils and straw.  
  
morgan is old enough to know that sometimes people won't always come back when they leave and it scares her. lucina hugs her tight and kisses her head and promises, as many times as morgan needs, that she'll come back and when they get back they'll play together and lucina won't leave again for a long, long time, until morgan is old enough to go with her someday. lucina doesn't like the idea of taking her child to battle with her but if it makes morgan feel better then she'll say it. and morgan hugs severa too even if severa still isn't sure what to make of it, but lucina smiles when severa musses morgan's hair and promises that she'll come back, too, and she straightens the little white hair clips shaped like pegasus wings, slightly chipped and scuffed and dulled from years in severa's pocket, that rest in morgan's soft blue curls. s _he has your nose,_ severa is fond of saying. _your freckles. your cheeks. your ears._ his eyes. she doesn't say the last part but lucina knows that it's true. (she's getting severa's smile, and her posture. lucina has seen her stand with a hand on one cocked hip, trying to walk with the swagger that severa has carefully developed and mostly failing because she's four and her legs are too short to successfully emulate it. she tosses her hair the way severa does when she wins a fight, tiny baby curls falling over her shoulder. she's trying to grow it out because severa has promised to braid it.)  
  
they fight the anti-robin on the back of the fell dragon, two miles in the sky with wind rushing and the sky around them falling, cracking into pieces and falling in baseball-sized chunks to the ground. lucina engages first, chin high and chest out, refusing to be cowed by this man that she can still feel on her skin and in her hair when it's late and she can't sleep even listening to severa and her friends breathe and snore and snuffle in their sleep and knowing she is safe. he sneers and says _did you think he loved you?_  
  
_what would you know_ , lucina replies. _unless it was you the whole time._  
  
anti-robin looks at her, perhaps mournfully. _he regrets it,_ he says. _he wishes he'd never pursued you._  
  
_well, he did,_ lucina replies and it feels like ripping open an old wound. _i was gullible and foolish and thought love was supposed to make you hurt and feel sick and shaky, and i liked the way he said i was strong and charming and beautiful. he knew it. he couldn't have not known it. i know he regrets it but i can't forgive him._  
  
_he understands,_ anti-robin says. and then he sneers. _he is a fool. if he'd taken my advice, you would've been nothing but something with which to fill a mortal urge and that would've been that. he would've preferred it were your father, but i suppose you'd do._  
  
lucina almost winces— almost. _go fuck yourself,_ she says, and lunges.  
  
in the end it is robin who strikes the final blow. chrom says _no, robin, don't do this to me_ and he says it with the pleading eyes of a man who is so completely, wholly, utterly in love in every way that he does not even know it because to his eyes he has always been this way and it is the way he is meant to live. and robin, the real robin, smiles at him. and he says _thank you for everything, chrom_ , as if it's the last breath he's going to breathe. cracks spread from his eyes and mouth and temples. _may we meet again, in a better life._  
  
and the cracks spread, white light turning his form to crumbling sand, and all that's left is his heavy coat and his scattered notebooks, pages fluttering in the breeze. and chrom cries.  
  
they return to the garrison that night and the celebration is somber but hopeful. they toast to robin, and chrom raises his mug and croaks, _to robin._ lucina refrains from drinking that evening.  
  
morgan pulls her outside by the hand once people wander from the tavern back to the garrison. _mama,_ she says. and she runs back inside to get severa.  
  
_mama, seva,_ she says, because severa has become seva and every time severa hears it her heart feels a little bit lighter. morgan points with a little hand to the summer night, and at the blinking little bugs glowing in the starlight. _fireflies._  
  
and there are fireflies by the dozens, and cicadas and crickets singing and screeching, and somewhere there is an owl. severa crouches and shows morgan how to catch fireflies in her tiny little hands and lucina watches, watches the way severa's eyes sparkle when morgan shrieks with happiness at feeling the little bugs tickle her hands and buzz away when she frees them, and she thinks i have never been happier in my life.  
  
_mama, look what i got!_ morgan says excitedly, severa's hands gentle over hers. and she lets it go and a firefly, bigger than the rest, flies out in lazy little circles but slightly indignant at being caught in a set of tiny hands. _mama, did you see? fireflies!_  
  
_fireflies,_ lucina agrees. and she smiles, and feels something build inside of her. she brushes morgan's curls aside and adjusts one of the clips, and says, _can you teach me how to catch them, too?_


End file.
